[ih] Fw: History from 1960s to 2025 (role of NCAR and other labs)

[Dave Crocker]

On 12/18/2025 10:36 AM, Craig Partridge via Internet-history wrote:
>     - Initially, NSF awarded CSNET to someone (I'm guessing UCAR) to oversee
>     two sites that created the initial CSNET - there were machines on both
>     sides of the US (I think one at Rand  on the west -- don't recall if east
>     coast was UDel or somewhere else -- Wisconsin was also involved?).


Larry Landweber, at U Wisconsin, collected several other universities to 
formulate a proposal to develop CSNet, as a collective activity to 
augment the Arpanet with cheaper access for other academic and research 
sites.  Since the proposal was about networking and NSF folk knew Dave 
Farber well, NSF sent him a copy (at U. Delaware) for commentary. I'd 
followed Dave to UDel, after working at Rand.  He gave me the proposal.  
My assessment was that the idea of the proposal looked quite good but 
that none of the proposers had any networking experience.

NSF followed up with a meeting at the American Airlines Admirals Club in 
Philadelphia, with assorted notables attending, to discuss next steps.  
Dave brought me along.  For some hours, the group learned that 
commercial networking was not yet as flexible at Arpanet, with almost no 
Host-Host services, and Telnet-like services were almost all that was 
available to customers.

Group frustration peaked with a question of what might be done, in the 
face of this.  Dave gave me a nod and I explained about dial-up email 
access to Arpanet.  I had MMDF operationally by then, which he'd gotten 
US Army Materiel Command funding for, since they too needed wider, 
cheaper networking access.

A new collective effort was formulated, with UDel applying MMDF and 
running the primary email relay, and Rand to be brought up as a second 
relay site.  UWisc was to do a directory service.  And Purdue was to 
develop an IP over X.25 driver.  Management of the project was conducted 
by a committee, comprising the PIs of the 4 sites.

The ISOC Postel Award was given to CSNet in 2009, at an IETF meeting.  
Larry was down with an injury and I was asked to do the acceptance:

    *2009 ISOC Postel Award to CSNet*

    🔗 https://bbiw.net/recent.html#PostelCSNet
    <https://bbiw.net/recent.html#PostelCSNet>

    en.wikipedia.org

    CSNET - Wikipedia <#>

    🔗 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CSNET
    <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CSNET>

d/

-- 
Dave Crocker

Brandenburg InternetWorking
bbiw.net
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